Pages

Sheep Full Day

We have not done any routine gathering of the flock this summer with the stock dogs (either for the purpose of night penning or just tucking ewes into a bunch at dark) like we have in the past. Last evening we gathered the ewes and walked them home and we could tell the difference in the way the ewes moved. Last night felt like the first time we tried night penning several years ago, with the ewes being reluctant to go where directed. The stock dogs worked very hard.

Today we sorted ram lambs from the flock and tagged all the wether lambs. This is probably the earliest we have tagged market lambs but we had to sort out ram lambs anyway, which meant taking a look at everybody, since we had our hands on them it made sense to put tags in at the same time. It was a long and full day of sheep work with Allen doing the brunt of the tagging work and me and the Kelpies gathering and moving the group and working the large alleyway to fill the race with sheep. I used Gibson, BJ and Cajun at various times and when it was time to move larger groups from the holding pen to the alleyway I used two dogs together. BJ hasn’t worked stock since having her pups.